Carbonless, multiple ply business forms generally include a number of plies that provide a desired number of copies of the form. For two-ply forms, the top ply is most often a coated back ("CB") paper and the adjacent underlying ply is a coated front ("CF") paper. In such a two-ply form, the coated back paper is treated with a carbonless coating that contains rupturable microcapsules that are filled with reactive, colorless dyes. The coated front paper is treated with a resin adapted to react with the colorless dyes. When the microcapsules are ruptured to allow contact of the colorless reactive dye with the resin, a color changing reaction occurs that produces an image on the coated front sheet of the underlying ply.
For a three-ply form, the top ply is a coated back ply, the adjacent underlying ply is a coated front and back ("CFB") ply, and the bottom ply is a coated front ply. In the three-ply form, the middle ply is coated on both opposing surfaces such that the coated front allows images to be made on the middle ply and the coated back allows copies of such images to be made on the coated front bottom ply.
Forms having more than three plies are readily made by adding intermediate coated front and back plies to the form. For example, in a four-sheet form, the top ply is a coated back ply, two intermediate plies are coated front and back plies, and the bottom ply is a coated front ply.
For convenience, the multiple plies of forms are generally adhered together along a single longitudinal edge of the plies. The adhesion of the plies to each other is accomplished using liquid adhesive compositions, conventionally referred to as "padding compounds," which selectively adhere only to surfaces coated with carbonless image producing compounds, allowing such surfaces to adhere to each other but not to surfaces which are free of such coatings. In some instances, an adhesive rejection solution is disposed over the top surface of the coated bottom ply and the bottom surface of a coated front ply to assure that the padding compound does not adhere to such surfaces.
This property of selective adhesion allows manufacturers to bond or edge-pad (join sheets together along one edge) a large stack of sheets which have been collated to give a desired form. For example, the two sheets that are used to make a two-sheet form are collated into a stack having, from top to bottom, a coated back sheet, a coated front sheet, a coated back sheet, a coated front sheet, and so on. In this collated stack of two-sheet forms, the liquid adhesive composition only bonds a coated back sheet to the adjacent underlying coated front sheet. No bond is formed between the coated back sheet and the overlying coated front sheet in the collated stack. Thus, the liquid adhesive composition may be applied to one edge of the entire collated stack and when the stack is dried and then fanned out, the stack spontaneously separates into individual two-sheet forms, each form being adhesively bonded together at one edge.
In such conventional, carbonless multiple-ply forms, however, each sheet is cut to its final size and shape before the sheets in each form are adhesively joined. Thus, such forms are not readily adapted to recordation or imprinting systems which produce variable sized or shaped forms or copies.
One common continuous feed imprinting system that produces variable sized and shaped forms or copies from a common feedstock is a "point of sale" imprinting system. Retail sales transactions using credit cards are typically recorded on continuously fed two-ply carbonless paper rolls using standardized imprinting equipment. A two-ply carbonless paper roll having one ply stacked or layered on the other ply readily provides two copies of the sale.
Specifically, in a "point of sale" transaction, a customer's credit card having a magnetic information strip is passed through a magnetic reader. Information from the credit card's magnetic strip, such as the customer's name, account number, card expiration date, etc., is read from the magnetic strip and this information is then imprinted onto a multiple-ply carbonless paper roll. At the same time, additional information related to the specific sale, such as merchant's name, items purchased, price, etc., is also imprinted onto the paper roll. After all of the needed information is imprinted and each ply of the paper roll contains a copy thereof, a sales clerk separates the imprinted portion of the paper roll from the rest of the main paper roll. The separated, imprinted portion of the roll, which varies in length from sale to sale, is presented to the customer for signature, then the two imprinted portions are separated and separate copies containing complete copies of the imprinted statement are retained by the sales clerk and the customer, respectively.
In conventional two-ply carbonless paper rolls, the two parts making up the roll are not attached or joined together. Accordingly, as the imprinted portions are separated from the main paper roll, the sales clerk and/or the customer must ensure that both imprinted portions that are separated from the paper roll remain properly aligned when the customer signs the imprinted portion.
In order to provide satisfactory imprinted copies of the sales transaction to both the merchant and customer, it is important that the imprinted portion remain together until it is signed by the customer. It has been found, however, that the small size of the imprinted portions, which have a length of about six inches, and the manual handling of the imprinted portions by the sales clerk and customer interfere with the proper alignment of the imprinted portions.
A need exists for a multiple ply carbonless paper roll which maintains the multiple plies of the roll in proper register when an imprinted portion is separated from the paper roll. Moreover, once copies of the sales transaction are imprinted on those portions of the plies and the imprinted portions are separated from the main paper roll, the plies should be readily and conveniently separable from each other after the customer signature is affixed so that separate copies may be available for retention by both the merchant and the customer.